


the way our horizons meet

by kay_emm_gee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e13 Praimfaya - Time Jump, F/M, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 08:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14421351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: She tried every day to make contact. Storms raged. Nothing grew. Her days stretched listlessly into one another. Still, Clarke radioed.She was still breathing, so she still had hope.{ a post-s4 time jump bellarke au }





	the way our horizons meet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @royalblakes as a winner of my fic giveaway. Took me a year....but I did it! Their request was to write a bellarke fic inspired by [this gifset](http://rhysfaerye.tumblr.com/post/141130487449/i-promise). 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Also, the fic title is from ed sheeran's all of these stars.

Clarke looked up at billowing clouds that swirled across the sepia sky, and she breathed deeply. It was a miracle to her, just breathing. It was a miracle that she was here, outside, inhaling and exhaling, without choking on blood.

It had taken four months, but the radiation levels were finally low enough for her to leave Becca’s lab. She couldn’t stay out for long, and she needed time in between trips to recover, but she wasn’t a prisoner anymore.

Thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance. Despite her newfound freedom, the ground was as dangerous as ever. She glanced at the flashes of light on the horizon. The storm would move in soon. She didn’t have much time.

Turning the radio’s microphone over in her hand, she swallowed.  _Now or never._

“Come in, Ark Station.”

She released the button, then pressed down again immediately.

“This is—this is Clarke. I’m alive. I’m on the ground.”

_Release._  

She breathed.

_Press._

“Ark Station, come in.”

“This is Clarke Griffin. I survived Praimfaya. Come in, Ark Station.”

_Release_.

She waited until four sets of thunderclaps had echoed off the surrounding mountains.

_Press._

“Answer me, Bellamy,” she whispered. “ _Please._ ”

_Release._

Clarke stood there, waiting and waiting, until her skin began to prickle. Blinking, she glanced up. The clouds were now a dull gray-brown and dropping rain. Quickly, she shoved the radio into her pack and ran for cover.

* * *

She tried every day to make contact. Storms raged. Nothing grew. Her days stretched listlessly into one another. Still, Clarke radioed.

She was still breathing, so she still had hope.

 

_Hope, that she had accomplished the one thing her friends had needed her to._

 

_Hope, that the only reason they weren’t responding to her messages was because of interference from the radiation._

 

_Hope, that her friends were still alive._

 

In the barren wasteland that the ground had become, amidst weeks of solitude and monotony, she lived for that hope.

“Come in, Ark Station.”

“Bellamy, come in.”

“It’s Clarke. I’m alive.”

“Raven...can you hear me?”

“Can anyone hear me?”

The radio stayed silent.

* * *

“The bunker’s gone silent too.”

Clarke dropped the radio speaker from her mouth. She swallowed, throat dry and thick. Grit and sand were everywhere—in her clothes, in her hair, under her fingernails.

“I tried digging them out, but...there was too much rubble.”

She glanced at the mountainous heap of stone and steel that had been the Commander’s tower. The rover was no match for the weight of that ruin. No matter how hard she gunned the engine, she couldn’t tow any of the rocks out of place.

Her eyes began to sting. She squeezed them shut to keep the tears at bay.

“So tell Raven that she needs to figure out a way to move a hundred thousand tons of building before you guys come back down. Five years with nothing better to do up there should be enough time, right?”

She mustered up a dry laugh. It echoed off fallen buildings, and only the wind answered her.

* * *

Twice more, Clark went back to Polis, but those times, she didn’t radio the Ark.

After all, nothing had changed. The earth was still dead. The bunker was still impassable. And she couldn’t be entirely certain that someone was listening to her anyways.

* * *

Raven frowned at the dead silent comms system. A month ago, she could’ve sworn the radio had hummed. Or crackled. It had made a  _noise_ , she was sure of it.

The electronics were fine. The receiver was fine. And yet, for weeks now, it had been quiet.

She sighed, then glowered at the broken microphone. Even if the bunker was radioing them, there was no way for them to respond. Being short on parts wasn’t new for Raven, but their current electronically deficient state at the moment was a new low. She didn’t dare waste components on repairing the rest of the radio unless they were sure they were receiving transmissions.

And the only way to be sure of that was for someone to be transmitting to them, which meant Raven spent a lot of time staring helplessly at a damn machine that she couldn’t even fix.

It was her definition of hell, but she sat there, just waiting for the slightest hint of static.

All of that time, all of that boredom, it would be worth it, just to give her friends a little bit of good news.

* * *

Clarke stood next to the rover on the edge of the windswept, sandy plain. After half a year of exploring, of mapping and charting and recording, from the top of the highest mountain she could climb, she had finally spotted a glimmer of green.

A glimmer of  _hope._

Now a desert and a very, very long walk stood between her and that glimmer. The rover was dead, its engine too clogged with dirt to keep running even before she tried to cross. So she was leaving it behind.

The speaker was heavy in her hand. Space in her pack was limited. She would have to leave the radio behind too.

_Press._

“Bellamy, it’s me. Again. I’m still alive. And I’m trying to stay that way, so I won’t be talking to you all for a while.”

Clarke paused, pursing her lips. Gathering her courage, she clicked the very, very worn speaker button down one last time.

“And, in case this is the last time I get to do this, I just wanted to say...please don’t feel bad about leaving me here. You did what you had to do.”

_Release._

She exhaled shakily.

After wrapping the radio and storing it in the dashboard compartment, Clarke turned back to the horizon. She pulled her pack onto her back and stepped forward.

* * *

Raven felt sick.

_She’s alive._

Clarke was alive. Her voice had been muffled, distorted by distance and bad reception. But Raven had  _heard_  her.

She had heard Clarke tell them goodbye, again. The first time hearing her friend’s voice in over a year, and it have also might have been the last time.

A sob escaped her, and she buried her face in her hands.

* * *

Raven didn’t tell anyone about what she had heard.

It would be cruel, to give them hope and then take it away in the next breath. And Bellamy—she knew he might not survive losing Clarke again.

So she didn’t tell anyone. The weight got heavier every day.

The radio stayed silent.

* * *

As she took another bite of her meager dinner, Clarke glanced at Madi, wondering if it was finally time.

When she had found Madi, the little girl had been utterly terrified and entirely alone. Clarke had cautiously earned her trust, and after that, Madi wouldn’t leave her side. They had done everything together: hunting, searching for water, gathering firewood, scrounging for scraps to build a new life with. For months Madi had followed her like a shadow. And at night, they slept next to one another, right beside the campfire, helping each other to keep the night and the memories it revealed at arm’s length.

Neither of them would have survived without the other, Clarke was sure of that. By now, though, Madi was no longer scared that Clarke would abandon her. She could leave her for a few hours at a time, when she needed to hunt bigger game or walk farther than the young girl was capable of. The trip she was now contemplating, however, was long enough that Madi would need to come with her.

It was a big thing she would have to ask of Madi, to leave this place where she had survived since Praimfaya. Clarke couldn’t wait much longer, though. It might already be too late to retrieve the rover intact, with the number of storms she had seen roll by in the distance, but having the rover would make a world of different to them. So she had to take a chance.

“Madi,” she said quietly. “I have a question to ask you.”

Still chewing, Madi replied, “Yeah?”

“How would you feel about a trip?”

“What kind of trip?”

Clarke struggled for a few moments. “A trip back to...where I came from.”

Madi stopped chewing. “Why?”

“There are some things there that could help us, but we’d have to leave this place—your home—for a long time.”

Madi was quiet. The silence stretched, and Clarke was beginning to regret asking this child to leave the only place she had ever felt safe.

“Okay,” she finally said. Her voice was soft, but full of strength. “Okay, we can go.”

“We will come back here,” Clarke said fiercely. “I will  _always_  make sure you get back home. I promise.”

* * *

“Spill it, Reyes,” Murphy drawled and tapped her truly terrible hand of cards.

Emori laughed at Raven’s sour expression, and even Bellamy couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. Raven hadn’t lost a round in their made-up version of Truth or Dare yet, so it was about time.

“I said Dare.”

“Nope,” Harper counted. “You definitely picked Truth.”

“Then I want to switch!”

“No go. We pick at the beginning of the round, and no take-backs. Them’s the rules,” Monty declared with a hint of a smile.

“Go float yourselves,” Raven muttered, without any heat. Then after a bit more heckling, and with a dramatic sigh, she capitulated. “Fine, fine. Do your worst.”

When no one said anything, she grinned a little wolfishly. “C’mon I’m not gonna bite if you ask something hard. I can handle it.”

Bellamy was about to ask his question when Echo spoke up first. “Tell us a secret you’ve never told anyone before.”

“Be a little more vague, why don’t you,” Murphy complained.

Emori poked him. “What she asked is the whole point of the game. You asking about what sex positions everyone has tried is far less exciting.”

They continued to squabble, with Harper chiming in on Emori’s side. Bellamy, however, was watching Raven. As soon as Echo had asked her question, Raven had blanched. She recovered quickly, but he could still glimpse a glimmer of torment in her eyes. And when he realized she was very much avoiding looking in his direction, he frowned.

The bickering continued, and when finally Raven gave her answer, Bellamy knew it wasn’t the secret that she had first thought of. He wasn’t able to catch her alone that night, but before dinner the next day, he pulled her aside.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I told you all plenty last night,” she responded drily. “Or did you have too much of Monty’s brew to remember?”

“Raven.”

“Bellamy.”

He huffed at her flippant tone. “If there’s a glitch with the Ark, then I need to—”

“No!” She sighed, shoulders falling in relief. “No, everything’s fine. Surprisingly so. Emori’s turning out to be a technical savant, and Monty is doing fine with the algae of course. We’re good, I promise.”

Her words rang true, so he let her go. As she walked away, though, Bellamy couldn’t ignore the foreboding tug in his gut telling him that Raven was still withholding something important.

* * *

Madi didn’t stop asking questions from the time they left to get the rover.

 

_Have you been here before?_

 

_Is this where you lived?_

 

_How about here?_

 

_What about here?_

 

_Then where did you live? That way?_

 

_What did it look like before?_

 

_Are we close to Polis? I never got to go there! Can we go there?_

 

_How many people lived there?_

 

_How tall were the buildings?_

 

_You landed on Trigedakru land, right?_

 

_Is that place close to here? Can we go see it?_

 

Clarke hadn’t thought about the dropship in a very long time. When she told Madi she probably wouldn’t be able to find it again, given how much the landscape had changed, she wasn’t sure if she or Madi were more disappointed.

Eventually, her questions turned from about  _where’s_  to  _what’s_ and  _how’s_  once they found the rover. Even covered in debris, Madi found the vehicle enchanting. Clarke was less enthused, given what rough shape it was in. Still, the damage was of the fixable kind, and she thanked the stars for giving her that small victory.

Clarke spent her afternoons gathering food and water for them, while her mornings were occupied with repairing the rover. Madi tried to help, but she mostly just asked more questions.

“So how does the engine work again?”

Clarke took in a deep patient breath. Never had she wished Raven were here more. “I’ve told you all I can, kiddo. I was going to be a healer on the Ark, not a mechanic.”

“Mech-mecha, what?”

“Mechanic.”

Madi repeated the word several times under her breath, making Clarke smile as she crawled back under the rover.

“One of my friends was a mechanic,” she said as she began loosening grit-filled screws.

“Which one? No wait, let me guess!” Madi said with a grin.

“Monty?”

“Nope.”

Clarke let Madi struggle for a minute or so before saying, “I’ll give you a hint: wings.”

“Raven!”

“Yup. Best mechanic in fifty-two years.”

“And she’s the one that’s going to get your friends back down here to us. I remember that part.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said softly, staring at the rover’s underbelly. Her vision blurred for a second, then she shook her head. The panel came back into focus, and she returned to her task. “Yeah, she’s going to bring them back down to us.”

* * *

Bellamy stared down at Emori, who was half-buried inside the wall.

“What are you doing?”

A loud bang followed by a muffled swear was his answer. Slowly Emori shuffled out back. She shot him a dark look as she stood, brushing dust off her clothes.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I’m following Raven’s orders.”

“Which are?”

“None of your business.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she crossed her arms. He rolled his eyes. “I’ll just ask her myself.”

“You do that,” she said with a smug smile. “And I’ll get back to work.”

As he turned to walk away, he noticed the speaker hanging off the wall, wires exposed and disconnected. His pulse jumped, and he jogged to Raven’s workroom.

“Have they made contact?”

She looked up from soldering. “What?”

“The bunker. Have they made contact?”

Raven frowned. “If they had, wouldn’t I have told you?”

“Emori was scavenging for audio system parts. I figured…” He trailed off, excitement giving way to a sharp disappointment.

Expression softening, Raven explained. “I want to be ready in case we hear from anyone. With the Ark running without any major hiccups for a year now, I figured it was safe to use parts for non-essential tasks, like the comms system.”

Bellamy nodded. It made sense, it really did, but it didn’t dampen the ache in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Raven murmured, voice catching strangely.

He shrugged. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You’re doing your best, and I know you’ll tell us as soon as you hear anything.”

She gave him a weak smile, and he left.

Over the next few months, Bellamy thought a lot about the oddness of that smile, and her apology, but he didn’t pursue his suspicions. Raven was hiding something, but in their three years on the Ark, she hadn’t led them wrong yet. He trusted that whatever she was keeping secret, it was for the best.

Even so, it didn’t make him sleep any easier.

* * *

Clarke winced as she climbed into the rover. Teaching Madi to drive was necessary in case of emergencies, but it was a rough process. While she waited for her back to stop twinging, she stared through the windshield at the night sky. The clouds obscured the stars, but the moon peeked through occasionally. Thankfully, it gave her just enough light to find what she had snuck in here in the middle of the night to retrieve.

The rover had been operational for a month before she even took a look at the radio. It had been a quick fix—just a little cleaning—but she hadn’t used it yet. And she still hadn’t told Madi about it. The chance that they would get a response, from above or below, more than three years since Praimfaya, especially when she hadn’t before, was too small. While she had come to terms with the possibility that her friends could be dead, Madi was still as full of hope as ever. Clarke wouldn’t,  _couldn’t_ , take that away from her.

So she had waited until tonight—when Madi was fast asleep and she had the energy to stay up—to try contacting someone, anyone, again.

The microphone button was stiff from disuse, but she stubbornly pressed down hard until the crackling speakers quieted and it was ready to transmit.

“It’s me,” she said quietly into the mic. “It’s Clarke. I’m still alive.”

She waited a long time for a response, and an even longer time for her tears to subside enough to try again.

“This is Clarke. Come in, Ark Station.”

She tried twice more, waiting longer each time, but heard nothing in response. The silence sliced through her, a killing blow of truth that she didn’t want to face quite yet.

“I’ll call again tomorrow,” she whispered, then turned off the radio and hid it under the driver’s seat again.

After climbing out of the rover, she walked until she reached the river. Following it upstream, Clarke didn’t stop until she reached the waterfall. With the rushing water and distance to give her cover, she let the cry that had been building inside her escape. It echoed off the stones briefly before being absorbed in the pounding of water. Her arms clutched her belly, and she crumpled in on herself. As the sobs continued to come, she fell to her knees. Mud seeped into her pants, but she didn’t move.

For the first time in months, she had let herself hope, and now, all she could do was grieve.

* * *

“Monty, I want whatever you put in her cup,” Murphy said.

Bellamy watched as Monty gave Murphy an eye roll. “You know we’re all getting the same thing.”

“Yeah, but Raven actually looks happy with her algae. If you spike hers, you spike all of ours.”

“I didn’t spike it.”

“Then why is she smiling while drinking this godforsaken soup?”

When Bellamy looked over to her sitting by herself in corner, Raven was indeed...cheerful. Even with the metal cup poised at her mouth. He frowned. Monty’s brew had gotten a lot better, but it was still a challenge to eat enough of the bland, gritty algae mixture to fuel themselves.

“Share the good news, Raven?” Harper called over.

She jerked her head, then gave them a small but genuine smile. “Uh, I will. Soon.”

“The good news better be that she found something to make this taste better,” Murphy muttered under his breath.

Monty immediately smacked him on the back of the head, and Bellamy turned back to their table to make sure a fight didn’t break out.

When he looked back to find Raven, she was gone. He passed by her workroom later, to find her frantically working on the comms system. She was swearing to herself, but with a smile, and so he didn’t interrupt. He just watched her work and wondered what exactly had made her so suddenly damned determined to fix the radio.

* * *

When eventually she told them all the truth, Raven realized she’d have to thank Echo for breaking her tablet yet again, because if she hadn’t stayed up late to fix it, she wouldn’t have heard Clarke for the first time in over a year.

Why Clarke thought they’d be listening in the middle of the night, she had no idea, but Raven wasn’t going to question too closely any sign of her friend’s survival. For weeks now, she had made up excuses to stay in her workroom long after everyone else had gone to sleep, just to make sure Clarke had made it through another day. She listened carefully to everything her friend revealed, relieved when her messages lengthened little by little. Raven cried when Clarke finally spoke about Madi, because it meant she wasn’t alone. They seemed to be doing okay, despite it being just the two of them. There were easy days, and hard days, but that was the case on the Ark too.

So Raven listened, and she worked. Emori was doing her best to scavenge parts for fixing the comms system, but it was going slower than Raven wanted. It was hard to refrain from revealing the urgency of the situation, when the rest of them believed this repair was a side project, just something to keep herself busy. She made sure to tread carefully in nudging Emori towards better finds and evading Bellamy’s ever more probing questions. She would tell them, soon, but only when she had the system repaired.

As frustrating as it was to not be able to respond, hearing Clarke check in every few nights gave her so much joy. She found herself laughing at her friend’s mishaps in trying to raise a child. One night, she was laughing so hard that she hadn’t realized someone was at the door.

Over Clarke’s voice, his rough one spoke. “When were you going to tell me?”

Raven froze in her chair, then slowly turned to face Bellamy. Clarke continued to speak, her laughter echoing over the speakers into the deathly quiet of the workroom for a few more moments before she said farewell and signed off.

Bellamy’s eyes didn’t leave the speakers until they had been silent for a whole minute. When he looked up at Raven, the disbelief in his gaze was heartbreaking. She rose slowly, hands raised, to combat the anger and confusion warring with the relief and happiness in his expression.

“We can’t answer her. At least, not yet. I was going to—” Her voice cracked. She blinked back tears before continuing, “I was going to tell you when I had the comms system fixed.”

Bellamy clasped his hands behind his head, looking up and away from her. His voice shook as he murmured, “She’s alive.”

“She’s alive,” Raven echoed. Gathering her courage, she explained, “I heard her over a year ago, just the once. I didn’t say anything then because it was a goodbye. She was traveling somewhere, and there was no guarantee...well, I wanted to hear her again before I said anything. The longer I waited, the harder it got, because I knew that even if she did make contact again, that we couldn’t talk back to her. And I didn’t want you to—I wanted everyone to be able to talk to her, not just hear her, because it—it’s been so hard knowing, and not being able to...”

As tears welled up in her eyes, so did grief well up in her throat, choking off her final plea for forgiveness. Immediately, Bellamy strode across the room and pulled her into an embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry you’ve had to carry this alone.”

“Clarke’s alive,” Raven cried into his shirt.

“She’s alive,” he repeated, and squeezed her tighter. “Clarke’s alive.”

* * *

“I think it’s time to go back.”

Madi looked up from washing the dishes in the river. “Really?”

Clarke smiled at the obvious excitement in her voice. “I’ve scavenged all the mechanical parts I can from Polis. If the rover breaks again in the future, we’ll be fine. And the storms haven’t been as bad lately. Crossing the desert will be hard, but not impossible.”

“When do we leave?”

“How about the day after tomorrow?”

Madi dropped the pot she had been cleaning and tackled her in an enormous hug. Laughing, Clarke embraced her tightly. She had promised Madi she would bring her back home, and she meant to keep that promise.

With that promise also came a small price. Exposing the radio to the heat and sand that would be abundant during the desert crossing was too risky. She’d have to wait until they made it back home to use it again. It would be a handful of days, two weeks at most. Still, it felt like too long, after having that little possibility of hope at her fingertips again.

So that night, she hopped onto the seat of of the rover and turned the radio on. She didn’t touch the microphone, just listened to the crackling of the speakers while watching the stars.

Her friends were up there, somewhere—she had to believe that, even if the silence tried to tell her otherwise. So she wasn’t going to say goodbye to them again. She and Madi would cross the desert, and build a home, a real home, together. It would be a home that would be ready to welcome the rest of her family when they returned.

With a small smile, Clarke laid back on the rover’s hood, closed her eyes, and fell asleep to the sound of static.

* * *

For two weeks, Bellamy sat by the radio and waited to hear her again. Most times, he wasn’t alone. They had told the others; it hadn’t even been a question to share the good news once he knew. Raven was almost always there—and not just because the system was in her workroom—as were Monty and Harper. Murphy and Emori wandered in with their cups of algae and snark during dinnertime, and Echo sometimes ran through her training exercises in the hall outside.

They all waited with baited breath as two weeks of silence turned into three. Just as the tension was growing from curious to worried, the radio crackled to life one afternoon.

“Come in, Ark Station. It’s Clarke. We’re back home.”

Bellamy shot out of his chair so fast that it fell over. As it clattered to the floor, he raced to the door and shouted down the hall. When he turned back, Raven was already fiddling with the radio settings to improve the signal. Pounding footsteps echoed from all directions of the Ark, and soon the rest of the group was flooding into the workroom.

“Eden is the same,” Clarke continued, her voice filling the room and making them all cry out in celebration. “One of the storms knocked over some trees, which is actually a good thing. We need to expand the living space, and maybe build a smokehouse, like the one we had at the dropship. Not that I’ll let Madi near it. I remember far too well what happened to it.”

She let out a dry laugh.

“Who’s Madi?” Harper whispered.

“Nightblood kid,” Raven explained. “Clarke found her living in the last survivable land on earth.”

Echo startled, and she exchanged a wide-eyed look with Emori. They both smiled, a little awed, and Bellamy’s throat tightened with emotion at their solidarity.

“It’s good she’s not alone,” Monty said to him quietly.

Bellamy nodded, relieved and amused and just the slightest bit concerned with the concept of Clarke having a charge to care for. It  _was_  good that she wasn’t alone but...he knew the cost, on both sides, of having only one other person be your whole world. They needed to get the comms system functioning at full capacity, as soon as possible. He looked to Raven, and as if she read his mind, she nodded at him with grim determination.

Clarke was alive, and she wasn’t alone, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try their damned hardest to reach her, even from all the way up in space.

* * *

“Hello?”

Bellamy blinked awake, glancing at the clock on Raven’s bench. Most nights, Clarke came on the radio a few hours after dinner time. Given the very late hour, however, he must have fallen asleep while waiting to hear from her.

“Anyone there?”

Frowning, he leaned towards the radio, barely able to hear the whispering voice. His pulse jumped, and his mind raced with all the scenarios of why Clarke would be calling so late, and speaking so oddly.

“Ark, are you there?” A pause, then came cautiously, “Raven? Bellamy?”

It didn’t sound like Clarke, and then it dawned on him. He sighed, smiling tiredly, and rested his forearms on his knees as Madi continued to speak.

“Clarke doesn’t think I know about the radio, but I do. I hear her talking to you when she thinks I’m asleep. I’m a good pretender,” she said proudly, then hurriedly added, “But don’t tell her that.”

Bellamy shook his head, thinking she and Octavia would get along well.

“If you’re there and if you can hear us—well...let us know. Clarke misses you. A lot.”

Her soft plea was like a knife to the gut. He rubbed his face with both his hands, listening to this brave little girl ask for a miracle from people she had never even met.

“Clarke said you’ll come back when it’s safe for you to live here again.” Another hesitant pause. “I hope it’s soon. ‘Cause I—”

A frantic yell in the distance silenced her.

“She woke up,” Madi whispered. “I have to go.”

The radio went dead, and Bellamy let it hum in the dark for a long time before shutting it off. He didn’t go back to his room, instead wandering to one of the windows to look out over the healing earth.

* * *

Madi didn’t call in as often as Clarke, but Bellamy enjoyed listening to whomever used the radio. It was a comfort to hear from Clarke just how well they were thriving on the ground, and it was a relief to get to know Madi, even if from a distance. Clarke had her work cut out for her with that one, he was certain.

It didn’t stop him from worrying entirely, but it made the days easier to bear, especially knowing that each day brought them closer to the one where they would be able to return to the ground.

* * *

“I should stop assuming that Madi will eventually run out of questions,” Clarke said into the mic. “Every time I think I hit the bottom of her curiosity, she just comes up with something crazier. I can only assume Octavia was like that at her age, except maybe worse, because there was so much she couldn’t see herself.”

She paused for a moment, melancholy at the thought of the girl under the floor. She thought of Octavia now, what she might be like, how responsibility and leadership might have changed her irrevocably. She thought of Madi, and her nightblood, and was, just for a moment, relieved that the life they lived now meant that her girl would never have to assume such a heavy mantle.

“I try my best to give her real answers,” Clarke finally continued, “but god, Bellamy, she comes up with some stumpers. Like yesterday, she asked how birds know how to build nests, and the day before she asked something about how the Ark worked that would make Raven proud and then this morning, she asked if I—”

Clarke stopped, suddenly, realizing what she was about to say. Then she sighed, because almost four years had gone by, the radio hadn’t given her a reply once in those four years, and in those four years, her answer, her real answer, to the question Madi had asked hadn’t ever really changed.

“She asked if I was in love with you,” she said softly, though there was nothing but the stars and moon to hear her. “She asked, because I tell so many stories about you, and because of the way I talk about you. Apparently.” She let out a little laugh. “And I—I couldn’t answer her, because what I wanted to tell her wasn’t true. I wanted to tell her no, of course not, that you are just...but that’s the problem. You aren’t ‘just’ anything. You’re everything to me, and you always have been, since the beginning. I love you, and I miss you.”

One more deep breath, and then she finished, “So come home soon please.”

Clarke let the button go, for once relieved that, even if she was the only one to hear it, she hadn’t left anything unsaid.

* * *

Raven walked into the mess hall just after sunrise and was surprised to find Bellamy already there. She walked over to his table, but he didn’t look up until she was right in front of him.

His brows were knit tight together, and he had a dazed look in his eyes. She sat, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “We’re definitely able to go back down at the five year mark?”

“Yes,” Raven confirmed slowly.

“And not any earlier? You’re sure?”

“Yes. Bellamy, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit. What’s happened? Is Clarke okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

“Then what—”

“It’s nothing, Raven.” He gave her a smile that was entirely unconvincing in its attempt to be reassuring. “I’m just...tired. Tired of being up here, tired of waiting.”

“We’re all tired of waiting to go back,” she said, putting a comforting hand over his. “But we will go back, Bellamy. I’ll get us down there as soon as it’s safe, I promise.”

The far-away look crossed his face again, and Raven sighed. She squeezed his hand once before rising and leaving him to his early morning contemplation.

* * *

“I told her not to pick up the fish like that, but she didn’t listen. Oh, she was so  _mad_  when its tail flapped her right in the face!”

Madi let out a full-out belly laugh before launching into the next part of the story, and Bellamy chuckled at her overwhelming joy.

Suddenly, she stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, and then after a long pause, murmured, “I heard that.”

Bellamy stopped laughing immediately.

“Is someone there?” She asked hurriedly.

He glanced down at the microphone component in his hand, eventually realizing that he had, out of habit, been pressing down the talk button while laughing.

And Madi had  _heard_ him.

“Is someone there?” She repeated, her voice so full of hope.

Swallowing tightly, he lifted the mic to his mouth, pressed down on the button, and spoke. “It’s Bellamy.”

A long silence, and then, “Hello. It’s Madi.”

He took a deep breath. “Nice to meet you. You’re a good storyteller, Madi.”

“That’s what Clarke says.”

He closed his burning eyes at the quiet pride in her voice. A choked laugh escaped him, because he was talking with her, with Madi. After all this time, they were finally,  _finally_  in contact with the ground.

“Bellamy?”

“Yeah?”

“When are you coming down?”

“As soon as we can. It’s not safe for us, not yet. But we will, I promise.”

He released the button, but Madi didn’t respond. The longer the pause stretched, the faster his pulse raced. If this fleeting opportunity to talk had been a fluke, just a singular moment of luck or chance—

Bellamy couldn’t bear it any longer. “Madi,” he radioed urgently. “Madi? Answer me, Madi!”

More silence.

He called her name again, not bothering to hide the panic in his voice.

Suddenly, the speakers whined before falling silent once more, but only for a moment.

And then he heard her.

“It’s me.”

He almost lost his grip on the speaker. “Clarke?”

“Bellamy,” she breathed.

“Hey.”

“It’s really you.”

“It’s really me.”

Her tearful laugh echoed through the dark and empty workroom, and Bellamy ducked his head, taking a moment to breathe in the miracle that was happening to them.

It was a miracle, that Clarke was alive, and breathing, and talking to him. And if it took them another miracle to get to the ground, he would pay the price ten times over, because in this moment, he knew. And he had to tell her.

“Madi?” He asked.

A beat of silence that stretched, and then her high voice came through. “Yeah?”

“Can you give me a moment alone with Clarke?”

“Yes.”

This time the quiet was on his end, as he prepared to say what he should have said years ago.

_Press._

“Clarke?”

_Release._

“Bellamy?” She said his name with curiosity, and a little caution. “Everything okay?”

_Press._

“Everything’s fine. I just...I needed to talk to you. To tell you, well, my own answer Madi’s question.”

Bellamy released the button, then pressed it down immediately again, because this couldn’t wait. He couldn’t let Clarke cut him off again, not this time.

“If she asked me that question, the answer would be yes. Same as yours.”

_Release._

A moment, and then her shaky breathing came over the speakers. She didn’t speak, just breathed, and he smiled, reveling in that wonderful sound for as long as she stayed on the channel.

_Press._

“And we’re coming down, as soon as we can,” he said. “And I’ll tell you my answer, face to face, again and again and again.”

_Release._

“Bellamy?”

“Yeah?”

“Hurry, please,” she said in a wavering but also teasing voice.

He chuckled. “Working on it.”

A slight pause, and then she spoke again. “Madi’s calling me, and I have some explaining to do, because we don’t do secrets down here.”

“That’s a new rule for us up here, too.”

Clarke laughed, but the silence after that laughter stretched, quickly turning bittersweet. “See you soon?”

_Press._

“As soon as we can,” he promised. “And we’ll talk even sooner.”

_Release._

“That’s a promise.”

She clicked off, and Bellamy knew it was as close to a goodbye as she would give him, because for them, it was never really goodbye. They loved each other. Always had, always would, and not even the end of the world could stop them from finding each other again.

He laid the radio to rest and rose, walking the station halls lined with starlit windows to wake the others and tell them the good news.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much appreciated <3 <3


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